The Monitor., 1887-09-02
PHYSICAL CULTURE.
ITS Relation TO Moral Development.

| along the path OF knowledge, broadening
with each step that leads to the develop
ment of perfect humanity.
The child Of to-day, born to intelligent
parents, receives very different care from
the hour it opens its eyes on the earth from
that given to it in infancy and youth.
There is less effort now to expunge the
| old Adam iniquity with which each human
being was supposed to be burdeDed at the
outset of existence than to give the new
Adam chance to expand and grow, unre-
| stricted by unhealthy conditions and envi-
ronments.
With strange perversity Of reasoning,
child's mental characteristics were consid-
cred before and apart from its physical re-
qHirements or peeuliarities.
No one expects an abundant yield of
lueious fruit from a neglected tree planted
in dry, sterile soil.
1t is not reasonable to suppose good mem
tai and moral endowments will result from
a physique that has been ill-treated from
the first time sustenance was taken into the
what it most needed for its development
during the years preceding maturity.
People would be Mortified at the idea of
trusting the lives of their children to a
steamship whose engine was imperfect for
long ocean voyage.
Parents send their children down the
journey of existence, trusted with the pre-
cious freight of their own lives, with the
engine of their vitality imperfect and out
of order With disarranged digestive APP
partus they are expected to have well-bal-
anced minds and clean, white souls.
Now and then the machinery, which has
been given the children of men with which
to propel themselves up and down the
earthly sea, gives ont and they must lie up
for repairs.
Sometimes no amount Of patching will
save the ship from sinking. A grave is
dug, funeral service read. Weeping
mourners follow the worn-ent frame, which
could no longer retain the fire of vitality,
to the spot where it is laid away.
Sorrowing friends cannot understand the
wisdom of the Providence to which they
credit the untimely end, in thus taking
from the midst of tie busy earth one whose
allotted years were but partly consumed.
s'John always had dreadful headaches
from the time he was little boy,'' the be-
reaved old mother of the boy who has died
of some brain trouble viii say to the first
sympathizer who calls after the funeral.
Or if it is a daughter whose death has
been caused from stomach or intestinal
disease, she will relate that s.Dolly had
weak stomach from the day she was ba-
by. Why, the poor little thing had in
flammation of the stomach when she
wasn't but Il years old and Thought we'd
lose her sure then Then she was taken
with it again when about 5, and liberation
of the bowels, too. Dear me, seems as il
my girl was predestined to go that way.
And she suffered SO.
1t never occurs to her that these early
deaths, this lifelong suffering, might have
been arrested by her own care.
She never fortunate that she does
not when nothing eau avail that those for
whom she would gladly have laid down her
own life were sacrificed to her ignorance.
The mother does not know that, had she
given the delicate mechanism of humanity
that came into her care the treatment it
should have had, it would not have fallen
to pieces before it had accomplished its
work
She does not realize that the first fatal
injury to the life she loved was done by
herself afar off in babyhood.
She. herself, worked the dire disaster
She tampered with the digestive func-
tions of her child by putting food nnsnited
to it into its stomach.
She tampered with its skin by not bath
ing it properly.
When a son becomes wreck from dissi-
patton, a daughter fall into the ways Of sin,
the parents. to whom this wasted, evil life
is worse than DEATH do not look for its be-
ginning away back in its first years when
the foundation was laid and the impress
sions made for a career of waywardncss.
Ignorance is only criminal when it can
be exchanged for intelligence
The thinking community is awake to the
physical and mental needs of children in
infancy and early life.
Therefore. no longer is Ignorance to be
tolerated in their cars. It's existence will
be blot upon civilization.
The time has come when laws, philan-
thropy, and wealth must not only be di-
rected in the building and maintenance of
hospitals. reformatories and prisons, but in
establishing institutions where ignorant
mothers shall be instructed how to deal
with the lives they bring into existence.
Places where these children shall be so
cared for that the methods will be a praeti-
cal demonstration TO their mothers and
where the willingly ignorant who will not
voluntarily 90 shall be forced to come.
When the mothers are educated in re-
gard to the needs of their offspring, reform
schools, homes for fallen women and peni-
tentiaries will begin to thin out.
Without this compulsory education of
mothers the day is not far distant when
maternity, instead of being the chief crown